Left Quotes

Progressives

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles - Karl Marx

When the rich make war, its the poor that die - Jean-Paul Sartre

The burden of being black is that you have to be superior just to be equal -- Jesse Jackson

I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion - Lillian Hellman

War, genocide, slavery results not from disobedience, but from obedience - Howard Zinn

You can cage the singer, but not the song - Belafonte

The Labor Movement: The people who brought you the weekend - Bumper Sticker

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression - WEB Du Bois

Hell no, we won't go (to war) - Anti-war slogan during Vietnam

I am too erratic and explosive to be institutionalized -- Har Dayal, 1912

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven’t melted -- Jesse Jackson

People often say with pride, “I’m not interested in politics.” They might as well say, “I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future, or any future.” -- Martha Gellhorn

It comes as as a great shock...to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance...has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you -- James Baldwin

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair -- H.L. Mencken

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side -- Aristotle

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't -- Abraham Lincoln

Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance -- Bruce D. Porter

When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government -- Thomas Paine

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire -- Mark Twain, The War Prayer

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual -- Frank Herbert

Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs -- Arundhati Roy, Tide? Or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire